


Sail Close to the Wind

by ironwreath (broodingmischief)



Series: dungeons & dragons [7]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: Blood and Violence, Developing Friendships, Dungeons & Dragons Character Backstory, F/F, Found Family, Gen, Memory Loss, Personal Growth, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:00:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29036628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/broodingmischief/pseuds/ironwreath
Summary: Snippets into Varonda Redback; half-orc warlock of the Fathomless. Impulsive and self-assured, making it up as she goes - what else are you supposed to do when you have no memory of your pact? Set in an original universe.Cross posted from Tumblr.Art of Red here.
Series: dungeons & dragons [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1638913





	1. Birthday

**Author's Note:**

> Any number between brackets indicates the session the fic takes place around. If there are no brackets, it takes place before or after the game or at an ambiguous point in time between sessions. These ficlets are in chronological order of the game's events and character's lives, not in the order I wrote them.
> 
> The Valcyis in this story is the very same from [Glacial](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22798024/chapters/54481852)!
> 
> "Out of the night that covers me,  
> Black as the pit from pole to pole,  
> I thank whatever gods may be  
> For my unconquerable soul.
> 
> In the fell clutch of circumstance  
> I have not winced nor cried aloud.  
> Under the bludgeonings of chance  
> My head is bloody, but unbowed.
> 
> Beyond this place of wrath and tears  
> Looms but the Horror of the shade,  
> And yet the menace of the years  
> Finds and shall find me unafraid.
> 
> It matters not how strait the gate,  
> How charged with punishments the scroll,  
> I am the master of my fate,  
> I am the captain of my soul." — Invictus, William Ernest Henley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red eavesdrops on her family.

Birthdays were always a little weird for Redback.

At first she wasn't sure why or even noticed. For her first eight years it meant Valcyis was around and gave her a neat trinket or bauble, her uncle or someone in the town inevitably fed her cake, and she was allowed a little more freedom than usual. She heard more ‘yes’s’ than ‘no’s.’

Closing in on her tenth year, tension shared space in her home. Her energy had always clashed with her dad's, but it was especially noticeable on her birthday. When she skipped into her dad's room to announce the date, it was like impacting the ground face first after falling out of a tree. There was a flash of pain on his face before he swept her up in his arms and carried her downstairs to make breakfast, the hurt of the fall having passed.

It was the same with Val, whose energy normally matched her own. She would greet her with a big hug, squeeze a little tighter than normal, but her eyes looked faraway when she set her on her feet. 

On her twelfth birthday, after she’d crashed, she rolled out of bed to refill a cup of water. Her family always spoke in hushed whispers when she slept, but their tone made her slow and loiter at the top of the ladder.

“—torturing yourselves every year,” Rugarth was saying. “Today's a day for celebratin’, always has been and always will be.” 

“We know,” Val said.

“And from what you told me it's what Penny'd want, too.”

Red's blood chilled. She rarely heard her mum's name.

“We know that, too,” Val replied, irritation colouring her voice.

“It's not her fault,” her dad rumbled.

“I think she can tell something’s up,” Rugarth said, and Red heard his footfalls, lighter and more dexterous than her dad's. His olive green skin and pop of red hair passed the base of the ladder and she ducked into the shadows. “If you get it all out in the open, you can celebrate two lives instead of tryin’ to celebrate one and grieve the other at the same time.”

“You don’t think it’ll ruin her birthday?” her dad asked.

“It might in the beginning? Not sayin’ it’s not a possibility, but she’ll also get over it, I think. She’ll appreciate the honesty.” Rugarth shrugged and moved again, out of sight, but she saw his behemoth of a shadow from the firelight. “Won’t know until you try, won’t we?”

“Do you think now’s a good time?” her dad asked. “Shouldn’t we wait until she’s a bit older?”

“As far as I’m concerned, telling these things to ‘em young is usually better. Longer you wait, the more time she’ll have to figure it out herself and the more time she’ll have to build resentment.” 

“I’m not sure,” her dad said.

“Isn’t it better comin’ from you instead of...I dunno, her own head?” Rugarth asked. “A stranger?”

“I’m not sure,” her dad repeated. 

“How do you know what’s best for her?” Val asked.

“I don’t, ‘course. I just like havin’ everything out on the table. I think she’ll be tougher if you don’t shy away from these things. Less sheltered, y’know?” He sighed. “I’m not speakin’ out of my ass. I had two girls.”

A chair scraped across the floor, followed by the heavier footfalls of either Valcyis or her dad. She inched back closer to the opening, her breath held in her chest like she’d captured it in a jar and was scared to let it go. She caught the edge of her dad, stroking his beard.

“This is just advice, Kethy,” Rugarth continued. “I think you’re potentially hurtin’ yourself as much as you’re potentially hurtin’ her.”

“I’ll have to think about it,” he murmured. She barely caught it. She might not have if she wasn’t so familiar with his voice. 

Rugarth put a hand on his shoulder. “I know it’s not an easy decision; can’t say I personally know a lot of kids who share a birthday with their mum’s death.”

The words hit like a sucker punch to the stomach, and Red gasped as if she _had_ been struck. Their attention snapped in her direction, so she fled, ditching silence altogether and running to get that glass of water she’d got up for in the first place.

Her hand shook as she filled her cup from a pitcher. It was so obvious, she felt stupid for not realizing it sooner. Of _course_ her mum’s death anniversary or whatever it was coincided with her birthday. Penny’d died giving birth. She _knew_ that. She’d just failed to make the connection between her heart and her head. 


	2. Sparkling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red sees the ocean for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For promptober 2020.

Red tore into a sprint the moment they broke the treeline. Her dad gave a startled "Wait—" while Rugarth barked an "Oi!", but she was gone, running and running and running until her lungs burned with the heat of a fire's coals.

She saw it through the trees, but in azure pieces broken up by trunks, teasing her. Now the horizon began and ended with liquid emerald and the air tasted of salted winds instead of pine. 

She skidded to a stop by a cliff's edge, bowing over with her hands on her knees, but her head remained fixed upright. She'd never set eyes upon anything like it — it was inimitable. The waves swept in against the rocky base below her and she peered down into beds of inky seaweed, dark enough to almost be black. 

She had so little breath, and any left was stolen by the sea, sparkling with mid-afternoon sun. She hadn't believed her dad or Rugarth when they talked about how pretty it was, and she had feigned disinterest up until she started seeing a different kind of blue through the vegetation. She'd grown up in one place for fourteen years, so far inland in the forest that the ocean was just a word to her; she wouldn't have been a teenager worth her salt if she didn't dig in her heels about leaving. 

It wasn't just a trip like the ones Val took her on, it was her entire life uprooted and dumped onto the deck of a ship. But seeing the ocean in all its splendour — it made it ache a little less. 

She heard Rugarth stop beside her, panting as well, and then the weight of a heavy hand on her shoulder. 

"Gorgeous, innit?" he asked.

"We get to be on it every day?" she asked, tearing her gaze away to look up at him. His eyes were on the water, too, and the breeze whipped his hair in striking red ribbons.

"That's what sailing is, right?" Rugarth asked with a wink, and gave her a friendly clap on the back that she felt through her entire ribcage. "C'mon. You went off the trail, girly — town's this way.”


	3. Mead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red stops drinking. Her dad notices.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For promptober 2020.

Redback eyed the golden-orange dribble that escaped the corner of a sailor’s mouth, then the quick flick of a tongue to retrieve it. She almost licked over her own as if she could chase its taste by mirroring them, but she pursed them instead and forced her gaze back to her open journal. The chaos of scribbles and notes matched the clamour of the pub around her and she hunched over the table, temple in hand.

Her journal saw use few and far between. Its earliest logs were her first days of sailing that petered off as her free time dwindled or filled with other hobbies. 

Like drinking.

It also had a smattering of entries from her time spent with Audrey. It seemed like her most poignant memories were what made their way onto the pages, but like everything else before, they faded. She hoped that her recent notes, the one on her supernatural powers, would fade into nothingness as well. Maybe they would become another memory to put behind her or something ordinary and lived every day, like sailing. 

Red looked solemnly back to the mug of mead. She wondered if it would even taste the same — her insides felt different, changed and energized, and she knew she could channel that weird current into magic. Sometimes that energy was like a presence that made the hair on her neck and arms stand on end.

She often caught Rugarth and her dad sharing hushed conversations about her. She swore she could hear whispers of their thoughts from across the room and felt tempted to project her own: _stop worrying. It’s nothing._

One time they stopped talking and looked around, confused and alarmed. She slipped away and tried not to think so loud, after that. 

“Sweetpea.” Her dad filled the seat across from her in the booth, setting two tankards on the table and pushing one of them towards her. “Looks like you could use this.”

Red clapped her journal closed with haste. If her dad noticed, he made no comment. She stared at the mug and wrinkled her nose, wrestled with herself, then slid it back towards him with a shake of her head. “Not tonight.”

“You’re not usually one to turn down a free drink.”

“Tonight I am,” she decided, folding the metal clasp of her notebook. “Give it to Rugarth.”

Keth looked back into the tavern. Red followed his gaze and found a red-haired orc facedown at the bar, fingers loosely looped through the handle of two empty mugs. If she listened for it, she could hear muffled snoring and the giggles bubbling around them as Ada and Albert tried to balance coasters and coins on the back of his head. Keth looked back at her with a frown. 

She shrugged. “Shouldn’t have any trouble finding someone else to give it to.” 

“True.” He took a sip from his own. When he set it down, he revealed a troubled brow. “You feeling alright?”

Red clenched her bandaged fist. “Yeah, fine. Why?”

“Dunno. You haven’t been yourself lately. M’just worried.”

“How’ve I not been myself?” 

He gestured vaguely. “I dunno. You’ve been hanging around less, you’ve been jumpy, you haven’t been getting into any bar fights, you’ve not been drinking...” He shook his head. “Father’s intuition, too, I guess. It’s not bad that you’re not doing these things, but it didn’t feel like you quit because you were yourself.”

Red scoffed and slid her journal off the table and into the pack at her side. “I thought I’d experiment, try not drinking for a while,” she bluffed. “I’ve been kinda irresponsible with it and I thought I’d try being...I dunno, mature? Same with all the fights. One of these days I’m gunna get my tusk knocked out and there’ll be no getting it back.”

Her dad looked unconvinced, his expression unchanged. Red frowned back at him. She knew he would figure out something was wrong eventually, she just hadn’t expected it to be so soon.

He rubbed a calloused finger along his thumb, then against the handle of his mug. “I don’t think Rugarth and I ever thought we’d be taken more seriously if we stopped drinking. Ada’d be offended you even suggested it.”

“Ada’s not mature and she knows it. That’s not what I meant, though. I didn’t think I wasn’t being taken seriously. I know I can be mature.”

“Then what is it?”

“I don’t – I don’t know,” Red said, clipped and frustrated. Not at her father asking, but at being unable to share the truth. That was why he asked — normally she didn’t hesitate to open up. Her circumstance was playing ring around the rosie with her. “I just feel wrong and I need a change. Is that not okay?”

He held up his hands. “No, it’s okay. I won’t try to stop you. I just wanted to ask if you’re okay. I couldn’t figure out if you weren’t drinking ‘cuz something was on your mind or if you were brooding ‘cuz you weren’t drinking.”

“I’m fine,” she assured him, staring him hard in the eyes. Green on canary yellow — so unlike hers, but striking in their kindness. “Some things I can figure out on my own.”

“But you don’t have to if you don’t want to figure it out alone.” Keth grasped her hand. “That’s what I want you to take away from this.”

Her hand burned. Her throat did too, a little. She swallowed. “I know that.”

“Good.”


	4. Latent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red discovers she can breathe underwater.

Silvery-white bubbles burst into existence around her like a set of wings. Red kicked for the light, in the direction the bubbles were drifting, pulling with her the weight of her clothes and the chilly embrace of the sea.

She broke the surface with a gasp and toss of her bangs, clapping a hand over her head to stop her soggy bandana from flying off. Ada waited above her on the docks. She was bent over a knee, her single plait hanging over a shoulder. She looked amused, painted lips cocked in a smile, but also ready to dive in after her. 

“The gangplank is a straight fucking line,” she called. “How’d you fall off?”

“Dunno,” Red called back, treading. “I think something jostled it. Lost my footing.”

A rogue wave churned up by the boat caught her upside the head on her next breath. Salty water crowded her nose and mouth, and her heart stuttered as she sucked it down the wrong pipe. She involuntarily reached for one of the legs of the dock to hold onto while she wheezed and coughed it out before she could choke on more — but it never came.

She inhaled the water as easily as if she were taking a swig of ale. It didn’t even burn on the way down. Her breath came unlaboured, elevated only by her panic and nothing else, nothing that it _should_ have been laboured by.

Ada leaned over the pier like a hawk. “You good, Red? Call ‘aye’ if you’re alive. Mouthful of water?”

“Aye,” Red answered, trying to swallow her jitters with the same ease. Her nail polish flaked under the scrape of wood, mindful of barnacles and mussels. “I’ll meet you at the shore.”

“You don’t want a hand?”

“No,” Red said. She needed to be alone with her revelation.

* * *

Falling off the gangplank and accidentally snorting water wasn’t an ideal situation to replicate, and Red didn’t feel comfortable trying again on a lake or by sea, where a mistake could have cost her life. Instead, she waited until she was alone with a bathtub at an inn, kneeling outside of it. She was safe.

She fingered at her necklace, closed her eyes, and planted her face in the water. It rallied against every instinct, but she did it — she willfully inhaled water.

The first time had to be a fluke. She anticipated the obvious: to gain a burning set of lungs, whip her head back out, and ask herself why the hell she just did that. 

It raced down her windpipe, but her body didn’t reject it. It sat beside the air already inside, coexisting.

She shakily breathed out, and in, and out again. Water passed through, thicker, but equally welcome, replacing air. She didn’t feel winded or lacking in oxygen. It just _happened_ , unnatural replacing the natural. She pinched herself. Awake as ever. 

Eventually, she sat up. It burbled over her lips, and she did cough a few times on the reverse, but after a minute she was back to normal. Well, no more normal than when she first woke up with magic, but breathing like any person ought to.

A single thought cut through the rising discord in her mind, loud and clear — Great. One more secret to hide. How many more would she stumble across before she no longer recognized herself? 

Her powers were latent, either growing in like mould, or already there and waiting to be discovered. 


	5. Jetsam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red runs away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For promptober 2020.

Red’d been in the water a thousand times. Lakes, rivers, ponds, jumping off docks and cliffs into the ocean — her dad called her a fish out of water. She still felt the crackle of nerves over her spine as she lowered herself over the side of the vessel. Something about the sea at night, lapping up against the side of the ship’s hull, bottomless and black with just the faintest bits of deep green where moonlight forked through — it was foreboding. 

It wasn’t just fear in her body, but in her mind. When she jumped in, she wouldn’t return to the boat and the people she knew, she’d wash up like a piece of jetsam on her lonesome and the ship would be lighter without her burdens. It wasn’t just her own presence in her mind, too, but another being entirely. It felt like it knew where she was at all times, like it could send creatures of the depths to where she swam. 

What was worse than fear and the hypothetical was her reality — accidentally harming others with her magic and not knowing how much more it could escalate. Without care, her powers were a stones skip away from killing someone. The crew knew as little as she did, and their fear could have left her jobless. She would rather make that choice herself than leave her sentence to everyone else.

Her dad, Rugarth, her family — they wanted to help her. She wanted their help, too, but she couldn’t let herself hurt them. She got herself into her own mess and she’d paddle her way out without dragging anybody else down with her. She’d research, learn, control. That, or cut out of the source power like a cancer.

She sucked in a breath, kicked off the boat, and plunged into the water.


	6. Spell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red’s first kill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For promptober 2020.

Red’s crossbow locked. She cussed, loud, and the swear ricocheted back at her from the stone chamber, then lost itself in the racket of combat.

She almost wanted to count herself lucky, but far from it. A pack of goblins greeted her group the first cavern they walked into. She wasn’t up in their faces, dodging and weaving around claws and swords like Dante or eating them up like Bracken — she cowered in the back, contributing nothing.

Bar brawls paled by comparison. Her heart raced and her skin was flush with adrenaline, but the reasons were different. Tavern fights felt good — she was grinning ear to ear the entire time. Blows hurt in the best way, like the aftermath of a workout, even when they purpled over and she tasted blood in her teeth. Her heart thundering against her ribs now was fright, not knowing whether she’d live or die, and with her weapon conspiring against her, she feared the latter.

She fixed the lock, but her finger still sat on the trigger — the bolt sprung free a hair from her nose, straight into the ceiling, and shattered against the rock. She clumsily reloaded.

She wasn’t good with crossbows even at her best. Val laughed up a storm when she taught her how to use the damn thing — why did she even bring it with her? Did it fail Val, an expert marksman and practiced merc? Did she start off this way too?

Red aimed and loosed the second bolt. It whistled past the ear of a goblin and clattered off the far wall. Anger blazed in her stomach, a cousin of her fear. She hurled the crossbow aside.

Her frustration coalesced, took form. Sharp, black threads of magic sparked off her chest and raced down her arms, collecting into a marble in front of her hand. She felt a sting in her palm and the energy burst forward in a serrated line, striking the goblin square in the chest.

She expected him to go flying with the force of the spell. Instead, his insides blew out his back in a shower of red confetti and thin sheets of green-tinted skin. It spattered the wall behind him and he collapsed, dead. She gasped, cold relief dousing her magic—

She’d never killed anyone before.

When she imagined killing someone — and she had, unbidden, ever since her powers manifested — she pictured broken necks, drowning, fractured skulls. Violent, but never gory.

The others cleaned up the rest. By the end of it they nearly looked as bad as the goblins, but they were alive. Red collected her crossbow from the ground. The wood and metal of it rattled with the shaking of her hands. 


	7. Waterfall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red’s final memory of the material plane is a waterfall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For promptober 2020.

Stone stairs lead to dirt path that gave way to open sands. The sand merged into a large, black lack, its surface absorbing all light and reflecting none. Cavern walls stretched out on all sides like a second, grey sky and Red took a moment to rotate on the spot, trying to soak it all in.

When she faced forward again with her toes pointed at the water, she saw it. At the opposite end of the lake a waterfall emptied from a human skull carved into the stone. Every plane of it was jagged, like it was hewn in great chunks without much care. She gulped. What she knew and saw was limited to the ocean and its ports. She didn’t come across many waterfalls, and they never looked like that. 

At the shore were two boats and grooves where a third should’ve been. Shards of bone speared the ground, occasionally disappearing under a wave from an unknown source of wind.

Red took the oar. She felt imbalanced, torn between the familiarity of steering a boat versus the uncertainty of sailing into the unknown. Terrified to disturb the lake too much, they drifted achingly slow towards the cascading sheet of water. It pulled her, whatever it was, but besides that, they needed to find the doppelgangers.

“I don’t think we’re gunna be coming back this way,” Bracken said in front of her, voice small. She was huddled into the boat like a boulder.

“Why?"

“Just a feeling.”

“Well. That’s morbid,” Red decided after a beat.

Redback’s final memory of the material plane was the waterfall, pouring over her head from the skull’s open mouth like an omen.


End file.
